Any of you picked up the Folio and noticed the redesign? The cover is cleaner, which is nice, and I like how it works with the current content, but I wonder how it will work in the future. I definitely like the inside better: nicer headers/footers/kickers, smaller body type, some nice vertical rules to separate the content from the ads… too bad they haven’t axed the dumb comics, and the much of the content still makes me grind my teeth.
Yeah, I like the new layout too. But I’m not a huge fan of the cover. The inside is nicely organized and cleaner, but I think the cover is the one thing a paper like Folio should have fun with. You know, cool typefaces, cool illustrations, etc.
I’ve been thinking about the cover some, and it just might be that the cover story isn’t very fun (corrupt politician) and therefore doesn’t warrant a fun cover. I’m reversing my earlier criticism, because I think the new cover leaves a lot of space (literally and figuratively) for whatever the issue needs.
In another reversal, Ron and I were looking at it, and found a bunch of inconsistancies and other ugliness — inconsistant space around pull quotes; some pull quotes jut into other columns, some don’t; one header has the arrows pointing the wrong way, etc.
I also noticed the ToC is almost worthless and rather confusing, because it doesn’t match up with the section headers throughout the magazine (News, Art, Music, Calendar).
I hope they work out the kinks…